


A Piece of Ice Lodged in the Heart

by Squeaky



Series: Intoabar fics [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Stargate Fusion, Community: intoabar, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode AU s06e04 'Frozen, Episode AU s0701 'Fallen', Gen, Grief/Mourning, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, Sam Carter feels, Sam Carter needs a hug, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24826120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squeaky/pseuds/Squeaky
Summary: Samantha 'Sam' Carter and the rest of SG-1 have been sent to the Antarctic base, tasked with helping to analyse a body that's been found frozen in the ice.Sam's still grieving the loss of her teammate and best friend, Daniel Jackson, and trying to deal with Jonas Quinn being his replacement on the team. She's happy for the distraction.But she's not expecting the body to be that of the lost war hero, Captain America. Nor is she expecting him to have survived being frozen for over half a century. She's also not expecting him to be ready to die to escape his grief.Sam wants to be there for Steve, but helping him deal with the enormity of his loss means that she'll have to face her own.
Relationships: Sam Carter & Steve Rogers, Samantha "Sam" Carter & Jonas Quinn
Series: Intoabar fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/457870
Comments: 20
Kudos: 38
Collections: A Ficathon Goes Into A Bar





	A Piece of Ice Lodged in the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Steve Rogers is actively suicidal in this story. If this will trigger you, please do not read!
> 
> For those of you who have not had the pleasure, this trailer shows the characters of [ Sam Carter, Jonas Quinn, Teal'c and Jack O'Neill, with a bonus of Daniel Jackson in the white sweater. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovdl51JwNegrel=) They are from the classic series [ Stargate SG-1.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118480/) It's awesome.
> 
> The Howling Commandos, Peggy Carter, Steve 'Captain America' Rogers, and James 'Bucky' Barnes are all introduced in the fabulous Marvel product [Captain America: The First Avenger.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458339/) If you haven't seen it, it portrays the origin story of Captain America and it's a real treat. 
> 
> I want to give a huge thank you to [Taste_is_Sweet](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_is_Sweet/pseuds/Taste_is_Sweet) for being the kind of beta that any writer would dream of. I'm very lucky to have her
> 
> This fic was also written for the Intoabar prompt: Steve Rogers goes into a bar and meets...Sam Carter!
> 
> * * *

Major Samantha "Sam" Carter pulled her watch cap down to cover her ears. It was late summer in the Antarctic, and a short walk from the small plane to the anti room of the White Rock Research Station, but it was still bitterly cold. Even the few steps she and her companions had to take from the plane to the entrance had her feeling both chilled and grateful for the anemic sunlight peeking its way through the clouds. Even though it was mid-May, the days were short as they headed towards the Antarctic winter. 

She led the small procession of herself, Colonel Jack O'Neill, Doctor Janet Fraser, Teal'c and Jonas Quinn into the base's anti room. Although not close to warm, the difference in temperature between the outside and the enclosed space where the snowmobiles were stored felt almost as good as sliding into a hot bath, and she sighed with relief. 

"Why's the plane leaving?" Jonas asked from the rear of the group, and Sam just refrained from rolling her eyes. He was always asking questions. 

"Cold's no good for the electronics," O'Neill answered Jonas with unexpected patience. "They'll be back."

"When?" Jonas asked sharply. He sounded nervous. Which made sense Sam thought begrudgingly. He was literally an alien, after all. He may never have seen cold like this for all she knew. She had no idea whether his home planet of Langara had icy poles at each end like Earth did, or if the land masses that made up his Country-State of Kelowna and its two neighbouring countries were all there were. She knew that was something Daniel would know the answer to, and for a second. she almost turned to him to ask. The instant realization she couldn't was like a piece of the ice outside lodging in her heart. Daniel wasn't alive anymore. She needed to remember that. 

"Ask these folks." O'Neill gestured towards the three scientists who had come into the anti room to greet them. There was a chorus of exchanged titles and handshakes, which apparently went on way too long as O'Neill cut them off and sent them inside. 

She could tell that O'Neill wasn't happy to be back in the Antarctic. She couldn't blame him, really. The last time she and O'Neill were there was because they'd both been violently thrown through a duplicate Gate that no one on Earth had known existed. She'd been battered and bruised but O'Neill had suffered a broken leg and a punctured lung. If Daniel hadn't figured out that they'd been sent to a different place on Earth rather than to a different planet…

She really had to stop thinking about him. 

Inside the research centre it was actually warm and comfortable. Sam went to unzip her coat.

"You might want to keep your coats on," Doctor Francine Michaels said. "We're keeping the Quarantine Lab at below freezing to preserve the specimen."

"We thought you'd want to see him right away," Doctor Fred Osbourne said. 

"Of course!" Sam felt giddy with excitement. She'd barely slept the night Francine had called to let her know about the frozen body they'd found near the dig site of the Antarctic Gate. They'd been excavating the site for four years, but all they'd found was the corpses of two dead Jaffa warriors. The poor Jaffa had probably died around the same time the Gate was abandoned by the Goa'uld around 2000 years ago. But when Francine had called, they hadn't yet figured out where—or when—this body was from. 

"Did Francine tell you the latest information from our discovery?" Doctor Isaac Woods asked as the group made their way to the Quarantine Lab. 

Sam turned to look at him. She had to tilt her neck to meet his gaze. "What did you find?"

"Well, he's not as old as the Stargate. He's probably not even as old as the Jaffa we originally found with it," Isaac said, sounding both apologetic and excited. "We think he's from World War Two." 

"Wait." O'Neill raised his eyebrows. "You say that you've found the body of a soldier from World War Two _here?_ "

"World War Two?" Jonas was suddenly beside them. "You mean the huge war between the Allies and the Axis powers? Wasn't that over fifty years ago?"

"Almost sixty," Sam corrected him. "But I don't understand. Why would his body be here?"

"Did Jonas not say it was a world war?" Teal'c asked. "Perhaps there was fighting here as well." 

"There wasn't," O'Neill said. "A British base, yeah, but no fighting. Well, that we know of."

"Weren't there a few things that happened during World War Two that we already weren't aware of?" Janet said with a sardonic smile. Sam grinned back, knowing Janet was thinking about the discovery that the Stargate had first been used in 1945, when they'd all thought the first time was when Daniel had unlocked its secrets in 1996. 

Her smile slipped. She had to stop thinking about Daniel.

Doctor Woods lead them through the Research Lab and the Observation Room. "He wasn't a foot solider," Isaac said as they went into the Quarantine Lab. "The plane we found him in seems to be—"

"You found him in a _plane?_ " O'Neill sounded genuinely shocked.

"How else would he have gotten to the Antarctic?" Francine asked. 

"Holy cow." O'Neill was now staring at the huge chunk of ice in the middle of the Quarantine Lab. It was solid and white with barely a shadow of what might be hiding underneath. 

"Wait." Jonas went to stand beside the Colonel and was also staring at the ice block. "This couldn't possibly be who I think it is!"

"What?" Janet asked.

"We cannot answer that question before knowing who you think it is, Jonas Quinn," Teal'c said reasonably.

"I think it's the guy who flew the _Valkyrie_ into the ocean to prevent Hydra from blowing up the United States!" Jonas said, his impeccable memory on display. "Steve Rogers." 

The name was vaguely familiar, but Sam had never been that into history. "Steve Rogers?"

"Steve Rogers," O'Neill repeated. "Captain America." 

"Captain America?" Francine's voice was a squeak. "We couldn't've possibly—!"

"Holy cow," Sam breathed with sudden realization. She remembered reading about him in grade school: how he'd been tragically lost to the world when he'd sacrificed his life to save the U.S. from certain destruction. She'd cried, reading his biography at twelve years old. "But that doesn't make any sense. He was meant to have crashed near Greenland. Antarctica is entirely in the opposite direction." 

"It would explain why Howard Stark never found him even though he must've searched for over twenty years," Dr. Fred Osbourne said thoughtfully. "Hard to find a plane if you're looking on the wrong continent." 

"It still doesn't make any sense," Sam said.

"Ocean currents?" Francine raised her eyebrows.

"We found the plane on land," Fred reminded her. 

"Beaming technology?" Jonas asked. 

Sam looked flatly at him. "This was World War Two. They didn't even have microwave ovens." 

"Sorry," Jonas murmured. 

"It does not matter how he arrived here," Teal'c said. "But he will require a hero's burial, if this is indeed the Captain America who performed the deeds of which you speak." 

It was like the reminder he was dead punctured the excitement of the discovery. 

"True," Janet sighed. "We should probably figure out how we're going to thaw him without doing too much damage to the body." 

An image of Daniel and his final moments came immediately to Sam's mind and she shuddered. 

She really needed to stop thinking about Daniel.

* * *

"Is this the most boring mission you've ever had? Be honest."

Sam looked up at Francine and smirked. "It's not so bad." 

"Liar." Francine slid onto one of the seats beside her in the Observation Room. It was the room attached to the Quarantine Lab and it allowed them to monitor what was going on without having to either stand the entire time or wear a surgical mask the way they would if they were inside. She glanced at Sam's computer screen, which showed a video of the ice block slowly melting under the electrical heaters. "You are literally watching ice melt. How can you say it's not so bad?"

"It's the thrill of discovery! You have to admit, it is thrilling. You might've found a missing World War Two war hero." 

"Thrilling and sad. It's always hard to think of someone dying so young." 

An image of Daniel immediately sprang to mind before Sam banished the thought. She cleared her throat. "I've been monitoring the temperature of the room and the melt rate of the ice. We need to ensure that we don't thaw his peripheries before his core as that could cause rot to set in before he's entirely defrosted." 

"Ew." Francine made a face. "That wouldn't be a good look." 

Janet and Jonas entered at that point. Jonas' worry over the weather seemed to have softened, replaced by the usual excitement on his boyish features. Sam mentally steeled herself for the barrage of questions he'd have about everything. She supposed she should be happy her new teammate was so interested to learn, but she just found it tiresome. 

"What wouldn't be a good look?" Janet asked. She moved to stand beside Sam, who looked up at her to answer.

"Captain America rotting before he's completely defrosted." 

Janet grimaced. "I don't think that will be a problem," she said to Francine. "That tissue sample you collected before we arrived? His flesh is remarkably well-preserved." 

"No adipocere," Francine agreed. “I couldn't believe it when I saw it myself when I first looked at the sample."

"What's that?" Jonas asked, as if on cue.

Janet turned to Jonas. "It's a residue that forms on dead animal tissue when exposed to moisture. But that's not the most amazing part. These tissue cells are intact!"

Sam blinked with that piece of information. "How is that possible?"

"No Idea," Francine said. 

"I'm still not getting this," Jonas complained.

"When living cells are frozen, the water inside forms crystals which destroy the integrity of the cell. But Captain America's cells are perfect," Janet explained.

Jonas tilted his head. "Like he was alive?"

"Yeah." Janet nodded. "Like he was alive."

"But what does that mean?" 

Janet looked through the window to the block of ice, where it was quietly melting in the tepid room. "I don't know."

* * *

The monitor in the observation room had showed 50 degrees Fahrenheit when Sam had put on a surgical mask and a pair of nitrile gloves and joined Janet and Francine in the Quarantine Lab. The room felt like a cool Spring, and the ice block was responding by finally melting enough that the figure hidden inside had been partially revealed. 

Steve Rogers had died on his back with his face turned to the side and one arm covering his forehead. He'd been in the uniform that Sam remembered from her middle-school history books; blue and white with two red stripes and a big white star in the middle of his chest. The sight made her feel nostalgic and sad. 

"He's remarkably well-preserved," Janet said in a hushed tone. 

"I didn't realize how blond he was," Sam said. The only pictures of Steve Rogers without his helmet had been in black and white. She'd kind of thought his hair had been a light brown, like Daniel's. 

"He looks so young," Jonas said. His blue eyes were large above the edge of his surgical mask. Sam refrained from mentioning how young Jonas looked himself. She wasn't sure how to calculate Langaran years into Earth years, but if she had to guess, she'd say that Jonas wasn't much older than 28, which made her feel positively ancient, even though she was only six years older. 

"He was only twenty-six when he died," Francine said. "I did some research while we were waiting for him to thaw." 

Sam winced. She knew soldiers were aware of what they were signing up for. Hell, she was a solider herself. But it was always hard to think of lives being terminated so young. "We'll ensure he gets an appropriate burial."

"His eyes are open." Jonas said quietly. 

Janet went over to where Jonas was standing by Steve Rogers' head. She took out her pen light. "His eyes seem as remarkably well-preserved as his skin—wait a minute." 

"What did you find?"

"Sam," Janet said, and her voice was tight. "His pupils dilated. I've got a cortical response!"

"What?" Jonas asked as Francine and Sam sprang into action. Sam jogged into the other room and returned with an electroencephalogram on a rolling table. 

"That shouldn't have happened," Francine said.

"Yeah. Dead people's eyes don't respond to light," Janet said. "Sam?"

"Got it," Sam said as she pulled the machine over to Janet, who immediately began sticking the small round leads on Rogers' forehead." 

"What's that?" Jonas asked, pointing at the machine.

"Electroencephalogram," Sam said tersely. "It measures brain-wave activity."

"You think he's alive?" Jonas asked, incredulous. "Does that kind of thing happen on Earth?"

"No," Janet said. She turned to Sam. "Ready." Sam turned it on.

Immediately the EEG's monitor flared to life. 

"Delta waves," Sam breathed. 

"That makes no sense!" Francine cried. 

"We need to get him out of here!" Janet turned to the observation room where O'Neill and Teal'c had been watching through the glass. "Colonel, crank the heat!" O'Neill nodded and a few seconds later the heaters flared with red light. Sam felt the increase in temperature almost immediately. The light jacket she'd been wearing suddenly became almost unbearably hot. 

After a few minutes that felt like hours, enough ice had fallen away that Rogers' limbs were clear. Francine left and came back right away with a stretcher and Teal'c, who wasn't wearing a mask. Sam shot him a look.

"My symbiote will protect me from any diseases that Captain Rogers may have," Teal'c said as he went to stand by Rogers' head. 

"I think we were trying to protect him from us," Jonas explained as he positioned himself by Rogers' legs. Sam stood beside Jonas, ready to help. Sam knew she was strong, but Rogers' looked like he was over six foot in height and nearly as muscular as Teal'c. She doubted she would be able to lift both his legs by herself. 

Janet was standing beside Teal'c, probably intending to help with Rogers' torso, but Janet was barely over five feet. It was unlikely Teal'c would even know she was helping. "On three," she said. "One, two, three!" 

Teal'c swept Rogers' torso up and gracefully placed him on the stretcher, while Jonas and Sam managed to get his legs over without dropping him. Now he was fully thawed his limbs were loose and his arm was easy to move down from his face. The shoulder rotated like someone who was only asleep, not the stiffness she'd expect from a man who'd been frozen for almost sixty years. 

Rogers was still wearing the oxblood coloured gloves and boots from the photos, as well as the blue, red and white armour with way too many leather straps. She paused, wondering what to do next. Jonas was well ahead of her. He'd pulled off both boots and then both socks and dropped them on the floor, and then pulled off the gloves on Steve's left hand. He paused at the right. "The fingertips are burned through." 

"That's not important right now," Sam directed him. "Janet needs his chest bare for the leads." 

"That's right," Janet confirmed. She looked at the thermometer in her hand. "Temp is 73 degrees." 

"No sign of frostbite," Francine said from where she'd been assessing Rogers' now bare fingers and toes. 

"Unbelievable." Janet shook her head. "Okay. Let's get this going." She rattled off a series of medical instructions that Sam ignored, knowing it was for Doctor Michaels and not her. Instead she helped Jonas with the rest of Rogers' clothes. 

She removed his thigh holster, which was missing its gun, then his duty belt, then the various buckles attached on his chest. It was like unwrapping a very complicated gift. Sam would've laughed at the thought; except she was too overwhelmed by the idea that she might be witnessing a kind of miracle. 

They'd removed his spaulders, leaving behind his thick leather shirt. It must have been brutally warm to wear, kind of like her jacket in this room. But at least she was now able to cut through the material with the trauma shears that Janet handed her. Half-way through, Jonas took over because her hand was aching from the effort it took to get through the fabric. She felt a small pang at destroying such an iconic piece of history, but saving his life was far more important.

Finally, his chest was bare and Janet and Francine placed the leads for the EKG. 

"What's that for?" Jonas whispered. 

"To measure electrical activity of his heart," Sam whispered back. "Now shut up." 

They finished, and as one, everyone in the room turned to look at the monitor. It was beeping slowly but rhythmically, reminiscent of an engine starting up and gaining speed.

"I think he lives, Doctor Fraser," Teal'c said somberly as they all stared at the screen.

"Yeah," Janet said faintly. Her brown eyes were huge. 

"He's bleeding," Jonas said. He'd pulled the remnants of Rogers' uniform off his arms and exposed the quarter-sized hole where Francine had taken her sample. 

"Oh shit," Francine muttered. "I didn't know!" She covered the hole with a thick piece of gauze and taped it in place. 

"Do we, uh, need to do anything?" Jonas asked. Everyone's eyes were still glued to the monitor, and its steadily increasing heart rate. 

"No," Janet said, eyes still wide. "I've never seen anything like this." 

Steve Rogers sat up, coughing violently.

* * *

It was cold. 

Captain Steve Rogers was shaking with it. It was like his blood was made entirely of ice; like his bones had been carved from it. 

What had happened? He remembered the bombs, and Schmidt's plane and hearing Peggy on the other end of the line, her voice thick with tears…

He sucked in a breath and he could _feel_ the icy slush moving. He coughed, a great wracking movement that had him rearing up and doubling over. 

There were hands supporting him, at his shoulders and back, keeping him upright while his lungs spasmed. 

"That's it, cough it out," a woman's voice said. 

_Nurse?_ So he was in hospital, and probably in America if the accent was anything to go by. Had he been wounded? He couldn't remember.

Finally, his chest calmed and he was able to suck in a whole breath. Someone draped a warm blanket around his shoulders and he huddled into it, still shaking. 

There were five people staring at him, four with light blue masks over their faces. All of them were white and three were women. The fifth was a large black man who wore no mask, but had a bald head with a strange gold tattoo of sorts in the middle of his forehead. He was directing a small smile at Steve. 

"Captain Steve Rogers," he said. "We are pleased to see you are still living." 

"Thank you." Steve's voice sounded rough and shook with cold. His throat was sore from coughing. 

The other man removed his mask. He was smiling brightly, blue eyes shining and for a moment Steve thought he was looking at Bucky before the War, even though Bucky and this guy didn't actually look anything alike. "Hi," the guy said. "My name's Jonas. Nice to meet you." 

"I'm Doctor Janet Fraser," the small woman said. “And I suppose we really don’t need these anymore.” She took off her mask as well. She was around her mid-forties, with dark eyes and short red hair. "And this is Doctor Francine Michaels." 

The woman with long hair tied in a ponytail waved the fingers of one hand, before also taking off her mask. "Hi." 

"And I'm Major Samantha Carter," the tall blond woman said. Her mask was already off, and Steve immediately noted how lovely her face was, even with hair so short it looked like it belonged on a boy. Her eyes were an unusual green-blue that snapped with intelligence. 

"Major?" Steve croaked. He'd never met a female officer with such a high rank, but it didn't mean he didn't know what he was meant to do. He went to stand.

"At ease, soldier," Dr. Fraser said, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Plenty of time for formalities when you're all better." The small attempt at movement had left Steve feeling light-headed. Dr. Fraser noticed. "Let's get you settled, shall we?" So, saying, she waved over the large black man to help him lie back down. 

"I am Teal'c," the man said as he supported Steve's weight to lower him back to the bed. 

Steve wanted to protest that he could do it himself, but he really couldn't. He was weak and exhausted beyond endurance. He didn't even care that his chest and legs were bare in front of three women, one of whom was a superior officer. Not when he was covered neck to feet in thick warm blankets that didn't scratch or smell like a wet dog. 

"Thanks," he murmured. He wasn't even sure if he said it out loud. His eyelids felt heavy.

"It's okay, you can sleep," Jonas said. "You're safe here." 

Steve wasn't entirely sure where _here_ was, but even if they meant him harm, he was in no position to fight. He knew they didn't want him dead—at least not yet. He just wasn't sure if this was some sort of trick of Hydra's to get him to confess the SSR's secrets, either now when he was so weak, or later, under torture. 

His mind flashed to the memory of finding Bucky in Zola's lab in Kreischberg, and he shuddered. 

"I think he's still cold," one of the women said, but Steve wasn't sure which one. His eyes had closed. 

In the next moment he was asleep.

* * *

"So, Captain America's still alive," O'Neill said. "That's…unexpected." 

"Maybe not, sir," Sam said. "We know that Steve Rogers wasn't always as strong and healthy as he was in the history books. It might have something to do with the serum he received."

"Of course it would have something to do with the serum he received! Everyone knows that," O'Neill scoffed. "He was a scrawny little twig of a man before he got the Super Soldier Serum." 

"Everyone among the Taur'i, perhaps, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c said, "but this is not knowledge that everyone knows."

"Fine. Everyone on _Earth_ knows that he received a special serum to become a super soldier," O'Neill corrected himself. 

"That's right." Sam just managed to not roll her eyes at the two of them. "Doctor Erskine, a German biochemist was rescued from the Nazis and brought to New York by the Scientific Strategic Reserve in 1942, in order to continue to work on the serum. By 1943 he'd been able to develop an effective formula. Steve Rogers ended up being the first, and only, recipient." 

"Only?" Jonas asked. "How come?"

Sam held back a sigh. "Doctor Erskine was killed by a Hydra spy on the day when Captain Rogers was given the serum," Sam explained. "No one's ever been able to duplicate it since." 

"And somehow, despite being frozen, the serum has managed to keep Rogers alive for the last 60 years," Janet added. "I mean, it's well known that it aided with healing and the immune system, but I had no idea it could do as much as that." 

"I wrote a paper about the serum when I was in grad school," Francine said. "There was some inkling that it might be effective for cell preservation, but this is beyond anything…" She shook her head. 

"Even Goa'uld symbiotes cannot do as much for their host," Teal'c said.

"So, that big guy on the bed in there. He used to be really small? And skinny?" Jonas asked.

"Like, Doc Fraser small," O'Neill said to Jonas. He ignored Janet's indignant, "hey!".

"It's really a fascinating story how Steve Rogers ended up being Captain America," Sam said to Jonas and Teal'c, warming to her topic. She remembered reading about him in grade seven, and how much she'd enjoyed the brave and tragic tale. "He was born premature and sickly in 1918 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up impoverished with a variety of ailments. When his best friend James Barnes was drafted into the 107th Regiment—"

O'Neill cut her off. "It's a great book. Should really be a movie. You can read it when we get back. What we need to focus on now is, is it safe to have him here?"

"If you mean from a biohazardous perspective, then yes," Janet said. "There's no evidence of any pathogen in his system."

O'Neill looked at Janet, then turned to Sam. "Carter?"

"I'm not sure I understand, sir. It's Captain America." 

"Who just survived sixty years in the ice!" O'Neill looked at all of them. "Is no one picking up what I'm laying down?"

"He is not a Goa'uld, Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c said. "I believe we confirmed that impossibility previously."

"That's not what I was laying down. Look," O'Neill sighed. "I know that he's a war hero. Hell, he's probably one of the reasons I joined the air force—"

"Really?" Sam couldn't help but ask. 

"Yeah, I didn't want to crash the plane if I ever got to fly one. But what I was _trying_ to say, is that we don't know anything about this guy. Now I see your expression, Carter, and I know we know about Captain America, but we don't know anything about _this guy._ Steve Rogers, who just woke up after 60 years expecting to be, well, dead. He's a trained super soldier who's probably as strong as Teal'c. He could probably kill us all without even breaking a sweat. Now, I'll ask you all again. Is that man safe?"

Sam opened her mouth to answer, and then shut it again. If she were Daniel, she'd say "yes" without a moment's hesitation. Daniel was good like that, able to get a read on people in one breath and trust it in the next. But she wasn't like that. She didn't know if she thought Steve Rogers could be trusted because of any sense she'd gotten from the brief moments when he'd been awake, or because of how she'd felt about him when she'd been a little girl. She closed her mouth.

"Of course, he's safe!" Jonas said, and Sam just managed not to frown at him. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"Mental trauma can cause people to react in unpredictable ways," Janet said. "And I'd guess that waking up like this could be very traumatic." 

"Not to mention all the trauma he went through beforehand, in the War," Sam added. She was thinking about that history book she'd read, and how it detailed the death of Rogers' best friend, James Barnes, just three months before Rogers' forced the Valkyrie down into the ice. She'd always wondered about the timing of those two events, and whether or not Rogers' really had no other choice but to bring the plane down. Even as a child, she'd wondered. 

"So, what do you want us to do, sir?" Francine bit her lip.

"Keep an eye on him," O'Neill said immediately. "Don't leave him alone for a minute. Not until we know what's really going on in that heroic blond head of his. And, oh. By the way, how he got _here,_ thousands of miles from where he was supposed to have crashed." 

"We also need to tell him what's happened," Janet said. "Let him know he's in the future." 

"That, too," O'Neill said. "Let me know how it goes." 

"Wait, don't you think you should be the one to tell him, sir? You're the highest rank here." 

"Rank doesn't matter for this, Carter! Besides, he's only a Captain." 

"I can do it," Janet said ruefully. "I'm used to giving people bad news." 

_I wish Daniel was here to help,_ Sam thought. Daniel was always so good with difficult conversations. She glanced at Jonas. He smiled at her. She looked away. 

"Take Teal'c with you," O'Neill ordered. "Just in case the conversation goes badly." 

Jonas looked through the glass separating them from the Quarantine Lab. "Looks like the conversation will need to wait until tomorrow. He's still sleeping." 

"I doubt very much that he'll be ready for that conversation until sometime late tomorrow," Janet said. "He may have survived being frozen for the last sixty years, but his body still has to heal from the trauma of it. I'd be surprised if he's awake before dinner." 

"Colonel O'Neill, Do you wish for us to take turns watching him sleep?" Teal'c asked.

"I would like you to observe him while he's unconscious, yes," O'Neill said. "Who wants first watch?"

"Isaac and I can take it," Francine said. "And I'll tell Fred to choose a spot."

"He can do second watch with me," Janet said. 

"I want you to have Teal'c with you." 

"And I will," Janet said to Jack, "when I have the conversation with Captain Rogers about how he ended up here. But I sincerely doubt that will happen any time soon." 

"Fine," Jack acquiesced. "But make sure Woods brings Michaels some dinner when he comes for his shift with her. And he'd better be a good cook!" 

Janet laughed. "I'll make sure, sir." 

"Third with me?" Jonas looked at Sam with hopeful eyes. 

"Sure," she smiled at him, hoping it looked more welcoming than she felt. 

"Carter will pair up with Teal'c," O'Neill cut in. "Jonas you can take fourth watch with me. You like getting up early." 

Jonas visibly gulped. "Yes, sir?"

Sam wasn't sure if O'Neill had made the offer because he knew she was still uncomfortable with Jonas, or because he was trying to bond with the young man, but either way she was grateful. She was trying to like Jonas, she really was. But every time she looked at him, she saw Daniel lying on a hospital bed, dying…

She shook her head to clear it. She really didn't need those memories.

* * *

"Good night." Francine waved at Sam as she made her way towards the women's sleeping quarters. Janet had gone to the Quarantine Lab to relieve Francine moments before, Fred tailing behind. Sam and Teal'c's shift wouldn't start for another three hours, and yet Sam was still awake. 

"Night," Sam called back. She was sitting at the long table in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee with her laptop opened on the table beside her. Even though the Antarctic base was extremely remote, the American Military ensured that it was well stocked with can't-live-without staples like coffee, chocolate and peanut butter. The food wasn't brilliant, but she had to admit that the coffee was delicious.

She sighed as she took another sip. She knew she'd be better off trying to sleep then drinking caffeine, but she also knew she wouldn't be able to sleep even if she tried. She wished she could lie to herself and say she was just excited because _Captain America_ had been found alive and mostly well over 50 years since he'd disappeared, but she knew that it wasn't excitement keeping her up. It was grief.

She'd hoped that doing some work on how to stabilize the naquadria they'd found on Jonas' planet so they could use it to build hyperdrive engines would've distracted her from her thoughts, but no such luck. Her laptop had gone to its lock screen a while ago. She looked into her half empty coffee, holding the mug in both hands. The warmth of the mug was welcome against the constant chill of the base, but it felt like nothing could touch the cold that had penetrated right to her soul. 

"Hey, Sam?" Jonas was standing in front of her, arms crossed and smile uncertain. 

He was the last person she wanted to see right now. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

His face fell. "Oh. Uh. You're busy. I'll go." 

"Wait," she called before he'd completely turned to leave. He was her teammate, after all. O'Neill would want her to make the effort. "It's okay. Sit, please." 

"Okay!" His smile was back like it'd never gone, dimples popping. She returned his smile with less enthusiasm and took another drink of her coffee. 

The silence grew between them. 

"I couldn't sleep because of the storm," Jonas said suddenly. And now that he mentioned it, Sam could hear it: how the wind wailed outside the structure. It sounded fierce. "I saw it on the Weather Channel before we left, that there was going to be inclement weather over the Antarctic for the next day or so."

"I guess the plane won't be able to come for us for a couple of days then, huh?" Sam said in an attempt to be polite. Jonas' obsession with weather was a bit of a running joke at Stargate Command. 

"We're pretty much trapped here until it clears." Jonas bit his lip. 

"This isn't the first storm White Rock's had to deal with. I'm sure we'll be fine."

"I guess." He tapped the table with his fingertips, then shifted in his seat. He sighed. "I'm sorry about…about what happened to Doctor Jackson." 

Sam's grey mood immediately darkened. "I don't want to talk about it." 

"I know…I know you don't want me here. On the team, because of what happened," Jonas plowed on as if Sam hadn't spoken. "And I'd give anything to be able to change it. But I can't. I _can't._ All I can do is try to do my best to follow in his footsteps and—"

"Follow in his footsteps?" Sam demanded, "you'll never be able to fill his shoes!" 

Jonas swallowed. "That's not what I meant. I just want to help."

"Like you helped Daniel when your government accused him of terrorism?" 

Jonas winced. "I know it took me too long to make that right—"

"Daniel is _gone!_ " Sam hissed at him. " _You will never make it right!_ "

Jonas visibly paled. He stood from the chair and remained in front of her. "It's true. I'll never be able to make it right. But you can't stop me from trying." He bowed at her from the shoulders, turned and left. 

Sam put her head in her hands.

* * *

An hour after her awful conversation with Jonas, Sam finally gave up on work. 

Janet was reading a medical journal and Fred was dozing when Sam went into the Observation Room that looked into the Quarantine Lab, fresh cup of coffee in hand. 

"You're here early." Janet closed her journal. "Why aren't you asleep?"

"Couldn't sleep," Sam said as she took the seat beside Janet and put her mug on the table. Her conversation with Jonas had left her more keyed up and even more distracted than she'd been before he'd disturbed her in the kitchen. The likelihood that she'd even be able to sleep by the time O'Neill took over watching Captain America at three a.m. was tragically unlikely. 

"Too bad," Janet sighed. "Not that I don't love your company, that is." She shot a glance over at Fred, who had started snoring gently. 

Sam laughed quietly. "Looks like you've had an uneventful shift."

"While I admit the Captain is pretty easy on the eyes, watching him sleep for almost two hours is a bit much," Janet agreed ruefully.

"Janet!" Sam pretended to be scandalized. "He's almost half your age!"

"If I was as old as Bra'tac, maybe. Captain Rogers went into the ice when he was twenty-six. He's pushing eighty-four, now." 

Sam tilted her head. "Is it more accurate to calculate his age based on the number of years he's been alive, or the number of years he's been conscious? Or maybe his biological age, which could actually be younger because of the serum—"

"It is way too early in the morning for you to start doing science," Janet complained. "Seriously, why aren't you in bed?"

"Since I was awake, I thought I'd relieve you early." 

"For real?" Janet sounded delighted. "But Teal'c's not with you. Won't O'Neill have a problem with that?"

"I don't think watching him sleep requires two people." 

"True. O'Neill's just careful." Janet stood and stretched. "Well, I'm going to go before you change your mind." She looked at the other occupant of the room, who was still snoring softly. "Want me to wake him?"

Sam nodded. "I'm sure he'd rather be in his bed." 

"Remember when we were kids and staying up all night was easy? Now staying up to midnight feels like a big deal." Janet shook Fred gently. "Come on, Doctor Osbourne, time for bed." Fred got up, as sleepy as a child and let Janet lead him out of the Observation Room. 

Sam was alone. 

She propped her chin on her hand and looked into the Quarantine Lab. Steve Rogers was still on the stretcher where he'd been placed that afternoon. Even though all the lights were off, the room was dimly lit from the glow of the electric heaters and the EKG that was still monitoring his heart. Sam could just make out the shine of the clear tubing connecting to an IV of fluids that Janet had inserted when he'd first been defrosted. She could see Rogers' face as well. His skin seemed abnormally pale in the low light, his features tight and drawn even in sleep. 

As Sam watched, the IV line twitched, then twitched again. Then the blanket heaved like something underneath it was trying to get free. Rogers' face constricted and he cried out. His eyes were still closed.

 _Nightmare._ She'd shared enough tents with enough soldiers to recognize a bad dream when she saw one, and this one looked like a doozy. She quickly went from the Observation Room to the Quarantine Lab, grabbing one of the rolling chairs as she went. Steve Rogers was already upset enough from his dream; he didn't need a total stranger towering over him as well. 

She reached his side and sat down. "Captain Rogers. Captain Rogers, you need to wake up. You're having a nightmare." 

If anything, the sound of her voice was making things worse for him, if the jerking of his limbs was any indication. For a moment Sam was worried he was actually having a seizure until he cried out: "Bucky!" 

Sam's heart clenched. He was probably dreaming about the death of his best friend. Sam couldn't imagine anything worse. She put out her hands to touch him, then drew back, unsure what to do. Her mind flashed to a memory of when she was a little girl and being woken from a nightmare by her mother rubbing her temples. 

It seemed far too intimate to do that, but she was afraid if she touched him any other way he might lash out, and she really didn't want to get hit in the face by a super-solider powered fist. Gingerly, she grasped the side of his head, her thumbs making gentle circles on his temples. 

He woke. His blue eyes met hers, dark with confusion and fear.

"You were having a nightmare," she said with a reassuring smile. 

He jerked back, out of her reach. "Where am I?"

 _Oh fuck._ Janet had said that she'd be the one to break the news to the Captain that he was almost sixty years in the future. But she'd stupidly sent Janet to bed. "Um." 

Rogers sat up, letting the pile of blankets fall off his chest. He noticed and immediately moved them so he was more covered. "Where am I?" he repeated. "What is this place?" His eyes were hard in the low light. "And who the hell are you?"

* * *

_Bucky was hanging from the side of the train._

_Steve reached out. "Take my hand!" But it was too late. The screws holding the railing to the side of the train shredded from the extra weight and sheared off. Bucky fell into the abyss._

_"Bucky!" Steve screamed—_

There was someone rubbing his temples. 

He woke. An attractive blonde woman was looking at him, her blue eyes darkened by the low light in the room. "You were having a nightmare." 

He had no idea who she was. 

The thought was terrifying and he moved away from her gentle ministrations and sat up. The motion caused the blankets to fall and he was immediately aware of how cold the air was and how he was undressed from the waist up. There were cardiogram leads attached to his chest, something he recognized from one of his many trips to hospital for heart palpitations in the few years before he got the serum. _Was there something wrong with his heart?_ He pulled the blanket back up to his chest, hating how vulnerable he felt. 

"Where am I?" Fear made his voice sharp and angry.

The woman looked at him, and he had a vague recollection of seeing her before, but he couldn't place where. "Um," she said.

"Where am I?" Steve repeated. The cardiogram had started to beat faster and louder in response to his growing agitation. He could see the way the peaks of the lines were coming closer together with the speed of his heart, like it was on a television. That wasn't right. EKGs drew lines on paper. The IV coming out of his hand wasn't right either. The tubing was familiar, but the source of the fluid wasn't the squat glass bottles he'd seen before. Nothing about anything here made any sense. "What is this place?" he demanded. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Major Samantha Carter," the woman said. "And this is White Rock, a research station on Antarctica. You're in our Quarantine Lab, where we've been treating you for severe hypothermia." 

A glimmer of a memory poked at him. "I met you before," he said, and then her title registered. "Ma'am." 

"Yes. When you first woke up. You tried to stand when you heard my rank." She was really pretty when she smiled.

Her hair was also very short, and he'd never seen clothing like what she was wearing. He looked around again, taking in the furniture, the machines and heaters. Even the bed he was lying on seemed _off_ somehow. He knew what they were, but they weren't like anything he recognized. He touched a sore spot on his right arm and found a small bandage taped there. "Is this an American base?"

"Yes. Its run by the US military." 

That was surprising. He didn't know the Americans had created a base in Antarctica. The last he heard was that the Brits had established one there in '43 to try to stop German U boats from threatening Allied shipping. He took another look around the room. There was nothing about it that looked like it had been hastily constructed or was meant to come down any time soon. "Why was I brought here?"

Her smile faltered. "Brought here?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "The plane I crashed. It was flying from the HYDRA base in Kreischberg. I was flying it towards the Arctic Ocean. I must have crash landed somewhere near Greenland." 

"We didn't find you near Greenland. We found you here. In Antarctica. Less than a mile from this Research Station." 

Steve's mouth quirked up, unsure if he should laugh or not. "I was heading towards Greenland. Is this some kind of joke?"

"I'm afraid not." She smiled again, but he could see concern etched into her features. "Somehow your plane made it's way from the Greenland here. We don't know how it happened." 

_Peggy, Peggy, I can't get the controls to respond!_

_I'll get Howard on the line. He'll know what to do._

_It's the Tesseract. The Red Skull dropped it on the controls and it burned through the dash. I'm gonna try to move it, see if it will help…_

_Steve? Steve?_

_It's not working. The controls are still frozen and It's heading straight for New York! Peggy, if I don't get this plane somewhere really far away—_

He remembered: The Red Skull holding the Tesseract aloft, and then him fading piece by piece until he'd been swept up into something that looked like a galaxy from one of Bucky's science fiction rags. The glowing cube dropped from his insubstantial fingers to lodge itself on the dashboard of the _Valkyrie_. He remembered the acrid smell of burning metal as the Tesseract melted through the dash into the delicate controls; the way the control wheel suddenly went stiff and unyielding in his hands. How the Tesseract burned through his gloves and into his flesh when he picked it up. The searing pain and the flash of blinding light. The silence. 

Steve turned his right hand over and looked at his fingertips. They were unblemished, every whorl of his fingerprints exactly where they should be. "The Tesseract! Did you find it?" 

"The what?" Major Carter asked.

"The Tesseract," Steve repeated. "The glowing, blue cube that HYDRA was using to power their weapons. It was in the _Valkyrie_ when I went down. Did you find it?"

Her mouth creased into a frown. "I don't know," she said. "Francine never mentioned—" 

"We have to get it!" Steve's heart was pounding again, sending the cardiogram into a frenzy of beeping. "It's the most powerful weapon that the Earth's ever known. If the Axis powers find out where it is and take it back…" Urgency was coursing through him. He thought of how close they'd come to having the entirety of the United States destroyed. He thought of Peggy and Howard, and how easily HYDRA could conquer Britain if they had the Tesseract under their control. He moved to stand. 

"Easy!" Sam put her hands on his chest, trying to hold him in place.

"We have to find it!" Steve struggled against her. Normally she couldn't have stopped him at all, but he was so tired. So _weak._

Major Carter was standing up and pushing against him with all her strength. "Captain Rogers, stand down! That's an order!" 

He lay back down, more exhausted than he wanted to admit from that painfully brief tussle. "We have to find it." He looked at her imploringly. "You don't understand how powerful it is. Hydra and the Nazis won't rest until it's back in their hands." 

The Major sat down again. She ran a hand through her hair which barely disturbed the short strands. She took a breath as if steeling herself for something awful. "Captain Rogers. I need to tell you something. The Axis powers were defeated. World War Two is over." 

A slow, hopeful smile began to spread over Steve's face. "The war's over? We won?" 

"Yeah, we did," Carter said. Her serious expression hadn't changed. "We won the war about two months after your plane went down."

Steve's smile faltered. "I've been frozen for over two months?"

"You've been frozen for over _fifty years,_ Captain," Sam said gently. "The war ended May 8th, 1945. Today is May 18, 2002."

The steady beat on the cardiogram faltered. "What?" 

"You've been frozen for over fifty years," Carter repeated, equally as gentle. "The current year is 2002. I'm sorry." 

"Fifty years?" Steve whispered. "That's not possible." Even as he said it, he knew what Carter had told him was true. Everything about the room he was in looked futuristic in a way that would have fit right into the pages of Bucky's sci fi dime rags. _Bucky._

Bucky had fallen off the train and died only three months before Steve had flown the _Valkyrie_ out of Austria. Only it wasn't three months anymore, was it? It was over fifty years. There might not be anyone alive except for Steve who remembered him now. 

There might not be anyone alive…

"Do you…" he had to swallow to clear his throat. "Do you know what happened to Howard? Or the Howling Commandos? Or Peggy?" He couldn't voice his real question. _Do you know if they're still alive?_

"I don't. I'm sorry. But we can find out," she said. "If you can give me their full names I can—"

"Howard Stark," Steve said immediately, "Margaret Carter. Timothy Dug—"

"Wait. Did you say _Margaret Carter?_ Brown hair, brown eyes, was a Lieutenant with the SSR in England?"

Steve nodded. "Do you know her? Is she still alive?" 

"She was my aunt," Carter said. "My dad's older sister. I joined the Air Force because of her. I remember she said she knew you."

Steve nodded again. His heart was still hammering, only this time it was because of the way Carter was using the past tense to describe her aunt. "She… _believed in me_ …was important to me," Steve managed to force past a throat thick with tears. "Is she still alive?"

Carter shook her head. "No. I'm sorry."

Steve's heart broke. He didn't have the strength to ask about Howard or any of the Howlies. Somehow, he'd gone over fifty years into the future and managed to lose everything he'd ever cared about. The news of the Allied victory suddenly felt very hollow. Tears welled up and spilled over against his control. Everything and everyone he'd ever loved was gone. 

"I'm so sorry," Carter said. "Aunt Peggy meant a lot to me, too." 

"I'd like to be alone now." Steve wiped at his eyes. 

"Are you sure? Because—"

"Please!" 

"I understand," Carter said, and left.

Steve curled onto his side, unable to fight the sobs shaking his body. Bucky was dead. Peggy was dead. Most likely Howard and Dum Dum and Jim and Jaques and Monty and Gabe were dead too. He was afraid to ask. Terrified, really. He was fifty years in a future he knew nothing about. He was sure his heart couldn't take any more. 

_It's the Tesseract's fault._ He remembered the feel of it in his hands, burning through his skin. But he also remembered the power it contained, the sense of an almost palpable intelligence. He'd been thinking of crashing the plane into the Arctic, somewhere as far away from living beings as possible, and somehow, the Tesseract had known what he'd wanted and brought him right there. 

The question was, had it brought him to Antarctica just through space? Or was he taken through time as well? 

He knew he'd been frozen in ice when he was found, but would it really take over fifty years for that to happen? What if the Tesseract had brought him to this time period from 1945? Carter said he'd only been found recently… 

If the Tesseract had brought him here, fifty-seven years in the future, then surely it could be made to bring him back. 

Steve's tears dried with the burn of new purpose. He was going to find the Tesseract and go home.

* * *

The rest of Sam's watch was spent playing cards with Teal'c and watching as Rogers tossed and turned in his sleep as guilt coiled thickly in her stomach. 

As soon as O'Neill and Jonas appeared for their shift, she fled to the shared sleeping quarters and buried herself in her sleeping bag. She was dreading getting up in the morning and having to tell everyone what she'd done. If only she'd left her mouth shut and let Janet do it. She knew she wasn't any good at this kind of thing. 

She fell asleep without meaning to, and woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and the chatter of her colleagues. She got up with a start, chagrined to realize that she was the last one up and it was already well past seven in the morning. Quickly she washed up and got dressed and made her way to the kitchen. 

The entirety of SG-1 and the research team was there. Someone had dragged extra chairs in from the Research Lab to fit all of them around the table, and everyone seemed to be enjoying breakfast. They all looked up as she entered. 

"Hey everyone," she said with an awkward wave as she made her way into the large room. Her smile froze on her face. 

Captain America was sitting at the table with the rest of them. 

"Good morning," O'Neill said, with only a hint of sarcasm. "How lovely of you to join us." 

"Come sit down, Major," Fred said, moving his chair over so that Sam could better squeeze into the one seat left. 

"Thanks." Sam sat, feeling painfully uncomfortable. Her seat was almost directly opposite both Rogers and Jonas, who were sitting beside each other and had been chatting about something before she sat down. Jonas smiled shyly at her, whereas Rogers' expression was distantly polite, like you'd give to someone you had to work with, but didn't like. _He's upset with me for telling him he's almost sixty years in the future,_ Sam realized. Rogers was shooting the messenger and it just happened to be her. She smiled brightly at him, shoving down the sudden flare of hurt. "Nice to see you up and about." 

"Clean bill of health this morning," Janet said happily. 

"I thought it might be nice to meet the people here," Rogers said. "Thank them personally for saving my life." 

Isaac and Fred beamed at him, and Francine actually blushed. Sam could understand how they'd be smitten. Everyone in the U.S. had grown up learning about the legend of Captain America after all. But was she the only one that noticed that his smile didn't quite reach his eyes?

"The Captain has been asking us all about where we found him and what the dig site is like," Francine said. 

"Interesting," Sam said as she started gathering her breakfast. "And what did you tell him?" She glanced at O'Neill as she said it, wondering if he'd catch her drift. It would be a lot easier for her to navigate the conversation if she knew if the Stargate was off limits or not. Just because Captain America had literally come back from the dead didn't necessarily mean he could know all the secrets of the Universe. 

"Well, if you'd been here earlier…" O'Neill said, because he could be an asshole sometimes. 

"No one woke me up," Sam said sweetly. 

"Jonas told us to let you sleep. Said you'd had a long night?" Janet looked at her with raised eyebrows over the rim of her coffee mug. 

Sam glanced at Jonas, who was studiously cutting his Eggo Waffle and wouldn't meet her eyes. 

"Oh," Sam said, unsure how to feel about Jonas being kind to her, especially after she'd yelled at him. In the light of morning she could admit to herself that maybe she'd been a little harsh. He was doing his best, after all. She had to remember that. 

"We were talking about where you found the _Valkyrie,_ " Rogers said. "And how it was located by a Stargate?"

So, he'd been told. Sam looked at O'Neill, who raised his eyebrows in a "what can you do?" expression that she didn't buy for a minute. She wasn't exactly sure what his plan was, but she wouldn't be surprised if Rogers was on a Gate team in the future. 

She wished that there was some way they could send him back home, but she doubted it. The only time travel they'd ever done required them knowing in advance exactly when a solar flare was going to occur to ensure they could take a wormhole through it. The technology to predict solar flares just didn't exist in 2002. Unless one of their allies, like the Asgard or the Nox, could help, Steve Rogers was destined to be a man out of time. 

"So, you heard about the Stargate, huh?" Sam said. "Any questions?" 

"A lot, actually." Rogers smiled. It was small, but real and Sam just avoided catching her breath. He was incredibly attractive, much more so than any black and white photo from her history books. 

"Carter here is the world's foremost expert on Gate technology," O'Neill said grandly. "If you have questions, she'll have the answer." 

"That'd be swell," Rogers said. "And maybe I could go see the dig site later today?" 

"I'd be happy to take you," Isaac said. "As long as the weather holds up." 

"It's not meant to start storming again until later this afternoon," Jonas said. 

"Plenty of time." Isaac grinned. "We can get going as soon as you're ready, Captain. Anyone else want to come?" 

"No thanks," Sam said with a quick glance at the Colonel. "I spent way too much time at the Antarctic Gate five years ago. I'm good with not going." 

"I'd like to go, if that's okay," Jonas said.

"Can you drive a snowmobile?" Isaac asked him. 

Before Jonas could answer, Rogers spoke up. "I can. We used them in Northern Italy when we were fighting the Germans." 

"Excellent," Isaac said. "I'll lead. Rogers, you stay exactly in my tracks. Jonas, you're with me." The three men stood and Isaac eyed Rogers. "The clothing I lent you looks like it fits, so I’m guess my extra winter gear will, as well." 

"Thanks." Rogers fingered the hem of his borrowed sweatshirt. “I appreciate it.” 

“Can’t have a national hero running around naked!” Isaac laughed at his own joke. Rogers' returned smile was wan at best. 

“We should probably get going.” Jonas stood and made to clear the plates, but Janet shooed him away. 

"Go have your fun," she said to him.

He grinned, looking every inch the young man he was and left with Isaac and the Captain. 

O'Neill watched them go. "Ah, youth." 

"It is good that Captain Rogers has found a companion in Jonas Quinn," Teal'c said. 

"Yeah. He seems to be adjusting well to having suddenly arrived in the future," Francine said as she scooped another piece of toast. 

"Yes," Janet said thoughtfully. "It's almost too good. I'm surprised he's not curled up in a ball somewhere. I think I would be." 

Sam cleared her throat. "He did, actually." All the eyes at the table snapped to hers, and she told them what had transpired the night before. 

"No wonder he took it so well this morning," Janet said. 

"Odd he didn't mention that he already knew he'd landed in the future." O'Neill raised an eyebrow. 

"Yes," Teal'c agreed. "I do not understand why he would have kept that information from us." 

"Maybe he didn't want us to feel stupid for telling him something he already knew?" Fred said to Janet. "It was pretty obvious that you'd chosen your words very carefully."

"Maybe," O'Neill said skeptically. 

"It makes sense, actually. We're the only people he knows in the entire world right now. A world he knows nothing about, and he doesn't trust us yet. I could see him wanting to be very careful not to piss us off." 

"Indeed," Teal'c said to Francine. "However, I am uncomfortable with his capacity to hide the truth from us." 

"Me, too." O'Neill looked at Teal'c. "Maybe one of us should go on today's adventure. Just to keep an eye on things." 

Fred made a face. "We're in the middle of Antarctica. Where's he going to go?"

"He wasn't called the greatest strategic mind of his generation for nothing. I still think one of us should go with." O'Neill raised his eyebrows at Teal'c. "Rock, paper, scissors? Flip a coin?" 

"I'll go," Sam said just as Teal'c raised his fist to play. She shrugged as both O'Neill and Teal'c looked at her curiously. 

“I thought you’d already spent way too much time here.” O’Neill made air quotes with his fingers. 

"One second thought, I wouldn't mind seeing the dig site," she lied. If she hadn't told Rogers about how he'd ended up in the future the night before, he wouldn't have had anything to lie about. It was kind of her fault that Rogers had made O'Neill suspicious. 

"Well, okay then," O'Neill said. "Make sure you bring a Zat." 

"Will do," Sam smiled tightly. O'Neill was suggesting a Zat and not a P-90 because it had a stun setting, and he didn't want Rogers to be killed if she had to defend herself against an angry super soldier. But the fact he wanted her to take a weapon at all meant he was feeling uncertain about Rogers' motives. O'Neill was untrusting and unwilling to open up to strangers at the best of times, so his caution made sense, but she really wanted it to be unfounded. She didn't relish the idea of zating Rogers at all.

She nodded to the others and left the table, moving quickly to catch up with Isaac, Jonas and Rogers before they left the compound. She made sure to stop at the small armoury along the way.

* * *

Steve felt like he was going to shake apart. 

His jaw was clenched from holding back his screams of frustration. He felt insane with how slowly Dr. Woods was touring them around the dig site. None of what they were looking at involved a strange cube with a glowing blue light. 

"We found you here," Dr. Woods said, pointing to a hole in the ice that seemed long enough to once have held Steve's frozen body. The Valkyrie had landed at about a 45-degree angle in the cavern, and had apparently hit bottom hard enough that the front windshield had blown in, filling the cockpit with ice and snow. Steve had been thrown backwards off the pilot's seat, bounced off one of the support beams near the back of the plane and then ended up halfway across the floor. Time had done the rest.

"You must have hit your head pretty hard," Major Carter said quietly as she looked at what had been Steve's final resting place. 

"Hard enough that your healing factor couldn't compensate before you were frozen," Jonas added. 

Steve grimaced at their words. They probably weren't wrong, considering he'd been found stretched out like a dead man. He wondered if it would've been better if he'd just died in the crash. It'd been what he'd intended after all. He shook his head to clear it of those thoughts. "Did anyone diffuse the bombs in the back?"

"Almost sixty years of ice and snow did that for us," Isaac said. "Hydra technology isn't anywhere near as durable as the Ancients'."

The Ancients were the original inhabitants of the Galaxy, who seeded life on Earth in their image over a million years ago, Steve had learned from Jonas that morning as everyone had explained what a Stargate was to him over breakfast. It felt like his head was going to explode, and his heart with it. He believed in God; had been Baptised Catholic at birth. Everything he was learning from these people felt unsettling and _wrong._ He just wanted to go home.

He stopped himself from wrapping his arms around his waist by putting his hands on his hips instead. He'd learned from his days as a dancing monkey to never show an audience his real feelings. 

"Did you find anything else down here, besides me?" Steve said, trying to hide his intense interest. He scouted the area with his eyes, looking for something, _anything,_ that could be the Tesseract. There was nothing but pristine white snow and the careful grid markers applied by Dr. Woods and his colleagues detailing every square around where Steve was found. 

"Not yet, I'm afraid," Dr. Woods said. "But maybe while you're here—"

"We probably should be heading back," Jonas interrupted. "Another storm is meant to hit in the next couple of hours."

"Too bad," Dr. Woods sighed. "But better safe than sorry. Maybe we can come back tomorrow?"

"Sure," Carter said tightly. It was pretty clear that she didn't like being out there. Her hand had been hovering over her leg holster the entire time they'd been there, like she was expecting Steve to do something violent. The edge of the weapon Steve had been able to make out looked like the bended body of a snake. He'd figured Carter and her buddies didn't trust him, regardless that they'd all been on the same side during the War. They weren't his friends and he couldn't expect them to help him, no matter how nice they seemed. The thought made him mad. As did the idea of leaving before he found the Tesseract. 

"I'd like to stay," Steve said. "Maybe look around a bit more?"

"Can't do that, Captain," Sam said. "If we don't leave now, we'll be stranded. And I don't relish the idea of having to sleep here." The muttered 'again' was almost too quiet for Steve to make out.

Well, he'd tried the easy way. "Yeah, we should go." Steve nodded at Carter and then moved to fall in step beside her. His right hand casually dangled close to the weapon on her thigh. 

One step later it was in his hand. It made a strangely musical noise as it extended outwards, like a snake readying to strike. He pointed it at the other three. "All of you, move back!" 

Carter looked angry enough to spit nails. "I trusted you." 

Steve's smile was all teeth. "You're the one that brought the gun."

"It's not a gun," Carter said. 

That was interesting. Steve had kind of figured that it wasn't a normal gun, especially as he couldn't see where you'd load the bullets. He didn't actually want to shoot anyone, but he wasn't going to be stopped. He was planning to aim for the shoulders or the feet if he needed to keep them away: somewhere nonlethal where they'd be sure to recover. But if this wasn't a gun, it could be way more deadly. He really didn't want to kill anyone, but he really didn't want to stay 60 years in the future, either. Despite the bitter cold, he could feel sweat start to prickle along his hairline. "So, what is it?"

"It's a Zat'nik'tel. It's non-fatal unless you shoot the person twice," Jonas said. 

Carter shot the younger man a look so sharp that even Steve winced. She turned a softer gaze on Steve. "Captain, you know we don't want to hurt you. What's going on?" 

"What's going on is that the three of you are going to take the snowmobiles and leave me here," Steve said. "Because if you don't, I'll shoot you." 

"Why do you want to stay?" Dr. Woods asked. His hands were up as well, his expression a cross between confusion and fear.

"What are you hoping to find?" Carter asked. "Because we can come back tomorrow and help you look. You don't have to do this. We're not your enemy." 

"Yes, that's right!" Dr. Woods nodded enthusiastically. "I'd love to help you find whatever it is you're looking for! If you just give us the gun—" he took a step forward. 

Steve pulled back the trigger. A ray of blue like shot out of the head of the snake almost faster than the eye could see. It hit Dr. Woods on his torso and he fell like a stone. Steve felt sick to his stomach, and prayed that Jonas' description of the Zat'nik'tel was right. 'Don't try to approach me." 

Jonas had gone to Dr. Woods and moved him from lying on the ground to a sitting position. "He's going to get really cold." 

"Then you'd better take him back to base," Steve said. 

"We're not going to leave you here," Carter said. "The storm—"

"Doesn't matter. Nothing matters!" Steve shouted. Why the fuck wouldn't they just leave? "Just get out of here!" 

"When the storm hits, it's going to get extremely cold," Carter said. "Worse above ground but bad here, too. You may have already survived freezing temperatures once, but I don't think you should tempt fate a second time. We need to leave, Captain Rogers, and we need to leave now. That's an order." 

Steve's chest squeezed. He'd been in the military long enough to feel the impetus to follow a direct order from a superior officer, and for a second the hand pointing the Zat wavered before he got himself under control. "I'm not leaving." 

"Well, we're not leaving either," Carter said decisively. "Not without you." 

_"Just go! Get out of here!" Steve screamed at Bucky across the chasm._

_"No!" Bucky screamed back, knuckles white where he was gripping the railing on the other side. He smacked the metal in emphasis. "Not without you!_

It felt like a blow to the stomach and Steve actually staggered, gripping his waist. Jonas had the Zat out of his hand before he could even think of defending himself. It was like his mind was as frozen as the landscape around them. _Bucky._ Bucky wad dead. He was dead; had been for more than fifty years. Even if Steve did find the Tesseract in all this ice and snow, even if he did make it home, Bucky wouldn't be there. He'd never be there again. 

He crashed to his knees, wracked with sobs as the enormity of his loss tore through him. There was nowhere he could go where he wouldn't feel this pain. He was as lost in time as Bucky was lost to him. He was alone.

And suddenly, he knew what he needed to do. 

Carter had said that the temperature was going to plummet once the storm hit. He hadn't died the first time he'd been frozen, but maybe he'd be lucky the second time. She and Jonas were standing in front of him, hands out and unsure if they should touch him or not. That indecision was his advantage. He spun on his knees and was on his feet the next instant, running towards the stairs that led to the surface of the dig site. He took the stairs two at a time, using all the strength and speed his enhanced body possessed. 

He felt something strike him, like being hit by a bolt of lighting but twice as painful. Everything went black.

* * *

Sam and Jonas barely had time to tie Steve's hands and feet before he was awake again. He went from unconscious to high alert in a matter of seconds. It was extremely impressive to watch and reminded Sam of Teal'c, except that the only time Teal'c had woken looking like he wanted to murder her was when he'd been brainwashed by Apophis. 

"You know these ties won't hold me," Rogers snarled. 

"We know," Jonas said, hands outstretched. He was still on his knees in front of Rogers, whereas Sam had moved back beyond his reach. She didn't feel like getting hit by a super soldier, and Rogers had shot Isaac already, which pretty much proved he'd be willing to hurt them to accomplish his goal, whatever that was. "And we're not trying to hurt you. We just want to talk." 

"There's nothing to talk about. You need to get on your snowmobiles and leave." 

"You've said that," Sam said. "But we still don't understand why."

A muscle bunched in Rogers' jaw, like he was physically holding back words. He jerked at where his arms were tied behind his back, testing the bonds. "You don't need to understand." 

"There's where you're wrong," Jonas said. "If you tell us what's going on, we could help you."

Sam saw his mouth twist at Jonas' words: a minute trembling of his lip like a child trying not to cry. _He's devastated,_ she realized. She'd thought he'd just been angry with finding himself so far in the future, but it was obvious she'd misread it. He wasn't just angry, he was wrecked. She thought back to what he'd said earlier, before he'd Zat'ed Isaac and made an incomprehensible run for the surface. He'd asked Isaac if they'd found anything else when they'd discovered his body. He'd said he'd wanted to look around a little more. "What are you trying to find?"

"The Tesseract!" he spat. "The thing that brought me here!" 

"The Tesseract?" Jonas repeated. He looked around the dig site as if expecting something to just appear. "There's one here?"

Sam looked at him. "You know what that is?"

"Yeah," Jonas said. "It was mentioned in some of Doctor Jackson's books. They're crystals of great power created by the Ancients. But I had no idea they were on Earth." 

"It was created by the Ancients?"

"Yeah," Jonas said to Rogers. "But how did you get a hold of one?"

"Hydra used it to power their weapons," Rogers explained. "It was being used to help fly the _Valkyrie,_ but it came out of its container when I was fighting with Johann Schmidt. When he touched it, he disappeared and it fell. I picked it up and ended up here."

And suddenly, Sam understood. "You think if you find it, it can send you back."

"It brought me here, didn't it?" Rogers' snarled. 

"Yes, it brought you _here,_ " Sam said, "but that's by travelling through space. We haven't found any Ancient technology that allows someone to travel through time." 

"No. I must have." Rogers shook his head. "There's no way that I survived being frozen like that for over fifty years. It's just not possible!" He began struggling against his bonds again. The ones around his ankles snapped and he was back on his feet in an instant. There was another audible _snap_ and his hands were free. He took a step towards her.

Sam backed up a step, Zat levelled. "Stand down, Rogers, or I will shoot you again." 

"I don't want to fight you," he said. "I just want to go home." His voice cracked on the last word, and she could see him fighting tears. 

"I know how that feels," Jonas said.

"Bullshit!" Rogers sneered at him. "You've jumped ahead sixty years, too?"

"I've been told my planet has a level of technology similar to Earth in your nineteen-forties," Jonas said. "So, yeah. Arriving here was kind of like jumping ahead sixty years."

"It's not the same. You can go home any time you want. My home—"

"I can never go home," Jonas interrupted. "I helped my government do something terrible. And the only way I could try to make it right was by stealing from them and defecting to the SGC. So, now I'm a traitor. I can never go home." His face crumpled, but then he smiled, like he was trying to hide how badly he wanted to cry. 

Sam felt stunned. She had no idea how much it had cost Jonas to be exiled from Langara. He never talked about his planet of origin, and he always seemed so happy and excited to be working at the SGC. She'd never thought he might be hurting. She'd never thought about it at all. 

"But what about your family?" Rogers said. 

"I'll never see them again," Jonas said simply. "They probably don't even know what happened to me." 

"My friends all think I'm dead," Rogers said softly. "They'll think my plane crashed into the ocean and I died." 

"You have a grave at Arlington," Sam said. "At least they had closure." 

"God," Rogers moaned. He covered his eyes with his hands, shoulders shaking as he wept. 

Jonas and Sam looked at each other, unsure what to do. Sam went over to him and put her arm around his shoulders. She wasn't a touchy-feely person. Daniel had always been so much better with this stuff than she had been, but she knew what this kind of loss felt like. "I'm so sorry," she said. 

To her surprise, Rogers turned and pulled her to him, holding her close while he cried. She hugged him back as hard as all their layers of winter gear would permit. It reminded her of all the times Daniel had hugged her after a particularly rough mission, or when she'd first found out her father had cancer. 

"I just want to go home," Rogers wept. 

"I know," Sam said, tears welling up in her own eyes. "I know."

* * *

"Tesseract, huh?" O'Neill said after Sam had given him her report. Isaac had woken up a few minutes after Rogers' tears had stopped and they'd gotten back to White Rock just as the storm hit. It could still be heard, howling outside. 

"Yessir," Sam said. 

"Any indication that it's actually at the dig site?"

"It's not," Sam said with a sigh. "It was found in the Arctic Ocean near Greenland by Howard Stark in nineteen forty-seven. It's been with SHIELD ever since." 

"Ah," O'Neill said with a surprising lack of surprise. "And I suppose you learned this from your aunt Peggy?"

"Actually no," Sam's mouth twisted. "It was Jonas who told me and Captain Rogers after we got back from the dig site." 

"Well, I think he might have figured out he's not going anywhere by now." O'Neill frowned through the window of the Observation Room into the Quarantine Lab, where Rogers was sitting at a small table, picking at his dinner. O'Neill had decided that Rogers was too much of a flight risk to let him roam around the entire station, so he'd been confined to the Quarantine Lab until the plane was able to take them back to Colorado. She sincerely doubted that the Lab could truly hold him if he wanted to escape, but so far Rogers hadn't done anything to indicate he was planning to run. He hadn't done anything, really, except look desperately sad. 

"What are we going to do with him?" Sam asked after a few minutes of silent observation. 

"We're going to try to cure what ails him and reintegrate him into the American Military," O'Neill said. "At least that's what the President said when Hammond told him." 

Sam had figured O'Neill would've told General Hammond, their boss and the base commander at the SGC. "Are you thinking of getting him on a Gate team?"

"You betcha," O'Neill said. "Best place for him, really." 

Sam was pretty sure that the best place for him would've been fifty-seven years in the past, but she wasn't about to argue impossibilities with her CO. "And if he's not interested?"

"Then we give him nearly sixty years of back pay, an honourable discharge, some updated paperwork, a flip phone and send him on his way. Oh, come on, Carter!" he continued at her skeptical expression. "We're not going to enslave him. We're not Goa'uld!" 

"I know sir," she said. "It's just…" 

O'Neill raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"He seems really sad," she said simply. 

"So was Daniel after his wife was killed," O'Neill said. "So was I after Charlie died. But we got over it. So will he." 

_I haven't gotten over Daniel,_ Sam thought. "Of course, sir," she said.

* * *

Dr. Osbourne had fallen asleep while watching him. 

Steve had been pretending to sleep for hours, waiting for the right opportunity to get out of the Lab, and it'd finally come. Doctor Fraser had left about ten minutes ago, and while she was gone, Osbourne had fallen asleep. There wasn't going to be a better time than this,

As quietly as possible, Steve slipped out of the bed. Taking his pillow, he rolled the blanket around it to give the semblance that he was still there, asleep. It wouldn't fool anyone for long, but he hoped that, with the lights dimmed, it would give him more than enough time to make his escape. 

They hadn't locked the door. It squeaked as he opened it, but the storm was still raging outside, pounding and whistling against the high glass dome. Anyone who heard him would assume it was the storm. With luck he could make it all the way outside before anyone noticed he was gone.

Silently he crept down the hall, past the kitchen to the main foyer area where the winter clothes were kept. Steve stopped as he reached it, unsure what to do. 

He looked down at his bare feet, peeking out from underneath the borrowed pair of scrubs he was wearing. His feet were cold already, and he was sure they'd be in agony once he went outside. He found the boots Dr. Woods had lent him previously and slipped them on, but left the coat on the hangar. Anything else would just prolong the inevitable, and he really didn't want that to happen. 

He turned and went to the main door, hands reaching for the latch. 

There was the now-unmistakable sound of a Zat gun powering up to fire. "Where do you think you're going?"

Steve took a fortifying breath. "Where does it look like I'm going, Major Carter? Outside." 

"It's minus twenty-three degrees out there right now. Dressed like that you won't survive longer than ten minutes." 

Steve smiled. "That's exactly what I'm hoping for." He reached for the door.

"I will Zat you," Carter said. 

Steve turned to face her. "Jonas said that shooting someone twice with that would kill them. Do it."

She blinked but didn't lower her weapon. "You really want to die?"

Steve didn't know how to answer that. "I don't want to live," he said. "Not here. Not like this!"

"But we can't send you back." 

"I know that. I know I'm stuck here. Away from everything and everyone…" he felt the familiar pressure of tears against his lids and stopped. He was so tired of crying. "I need to go." 

"No!" Carter lowered the Zat and outstretched her hand instead. "Steve, you can't." 

It was the first time she'd called him by his first name. "Carter—"

"Please, call me Sam," she said. "And can we talk about this? Before you do something permanent?"

"I don't want to live," he repeated.

"I understand," she said. "But can we talk about it? Please?"

It would take nothing for him to turn around, rip the door off the hinges and run into the night. He could probably get pretty far in ten minutes. Maybe far enough that it would take another sixty years before anyone found him again. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, suddenly exhausted. "Yeah, okay." 

"Oh, thank God," Sam said, heartfelt. She went to him, took his wrist and led him to the kitchen. There was no one else there this late at night. Steve sat and watched listlessly as Sam made both of them a cup of tea. It smelled fragrant and reminiscent of cut grass. 

"It's called green tea," she explained. "From Japan." 

Steve hadn't even known something called "green tea" existed. Weren't all tea leaves green before they were dried? It tasted light and bittersweet on his tongue, with a faint plant-like aftertaste. He decided he liked it. 

They sipped tea together in silence, and the tautness in Steve's shoulders that he'd had ever since he'd woken up eased a little. It made his eyes burn and his chest hurt. He'd lost everyone. He'd lost Bucky. He'd never be able to be happy again. He put his head in his hands.

"My best friend died a month ago," Sam said.

Steve raised his head. "What?"

"My best friend was a man named Daniel Jackson. He had a Ph.D. in Archaeology, could speak over twenty-five languages and was one of the brightest and kindest men I've ever known. And then something bad and stupid happened on Jonas' planet, and he died. I've been trying to deal with it ever since." 

Steve thought back to the dig site when Jonas was talking about his government doing something terrible. "Was that what Jonas got exiled for?"

"Indirectly. Jonas lived in a City-State called Kelowna, who was using a mineral called naquadria to build a bomb in order to destroy the neighbouring countries of Tirania and The Andari Federation. Jonas was the secretary to the First Minister, which is like our president. Daniel was with Jonas, observing one of their experiments with naquadria when something happened. Daniel ended up getting irradiated when he prevented a massive explosion from occurring. But instead of admitting their own incompetence, the government of Kelowna insisted that Daniel had sabotaged the experiment and caused his own death. Jonas stole the naquadria they were using to build the bomb and defected to Earth to prevent his country from going to war." 

Jonas hadn't made himself sound nearly as heroic as Sam had made him out to be. Nor had he guessed that Sam was also grieving. "I'm sorry for the loss of your friend." 

"Me, too." Sam's smile was watery. "I miss him every day." 

Steve nodded. "My friend Bucky. He…he died before I went into the ice." 

Sam was nodding too. "Three months before. I remember from my history books. I'm so sorry." She covered one of his hands with her own. 

"I kept thinking it'd get better." Steve tried to smile. "Things were going well. We were winning the war. But I couldn't be happy about it. About any of it. It was like everything good died with him." 

"Jonas has been working really hard to be part of our team. And he's always so cheerful and positive, and I hate it." Sam smiled through her tears. "I hate it because every time I look at him, I know he's not Daniel. And I miss him so much." 

"I was happy about going into the ice. I was _glad,_ because it meant that I wasn't going to have to feel bad about Bucky. That maybe I'd even get to see him again. But then I woke up here, and now _everyone_ is gone. And I don't know how to get through this."

"I don't know either," Sam said. She gripped both of his hands tightly in hers, tears falling freely down her face. "I don't have a clue how to make it through each day, knowing that Daniel isn't coming back. But the one thing that keeps me going? The one thing is knowing that Daniel wouldn't want me to give up. He wouldn't want me to die when he fought so hard for others to live. So that's what I'm trying to do. Live for him." 

"Is it working?" Steve asked. 

Sam nodded. "Some days are easier than others, but yeah. It's working." 

"Bucky always had my back. He died because he was protecting me." 

"I guess he wanted you to live, as well," Sam said. "He must have thought you were worth it."

"Your aunt said almost the same thing to me, right after he died."

"Then it must be true," Sam said. "Aunt Peggy was always right." 

Steve chuckled sadly, remembering. "Was she happy?"

"She was a great lady and she had a great life. She married one of the Howling Commandos after the war. Gabe Jones?"

Steve's eyes widened. "Gabe? You're kidding!" 

"Nope." Sam smiled. "They were married in New York City in 1947. My dad was the ring bearer." 

"That's amazing." Steve smiled, thinking of Gabe and Peggy, two of his favourite people, having a great life together. "What happened to the others?"

"I don't know all the details, but I know enough." She settled back in her seat, eyes twinkling. "Shall we start with Dum Dum first?"

"Yeah," Steve grinned. "Lets."

* * *

It was well past four a.m. when Sam finally ran out of things to tell Steve about what she remembered of the Howling Commandos. She walked him back to the Quarantine Lab, and tucked him into bed like he was much younger than his twenty-six years. 

"You promise you'll stay put until morning?" she asked, running a hand through his hair. They both knew she was really asking if he was going to try to run out into the storm again.

"I promise," he said, holding her gaze. 

She nodded. "Good." She stayed just long enough to watch his eyes close before she slipped out, locking the door behind her. She wasn't sure how dark a place he was in, and she didn't want to risk his life, no matter how many promises he gave. 

O'Neill and Jonas were in the Observation Room, having already started their watch. "Nice of you to bring him back, Carter," O'Neill said. "Otherwise we'd have nothing to do." 

"He's not in a good way, sir," Sam said, and then explained what had just transpired. 

"So that's why he took off at the dig site. Because he wanted to go out into the storm!" Jonas' eyes were wide with shock. 

"Boy's been through a lot. We'll make sure he gets to talk to old Doc MacKenzie when we get back to the SGC. Get his head on straight." O'Neill looked at Sam. "Carter, you look exhausted. Go to bed." 

Sam nodded. "Yessir." She turned to leave, then turned back. "Actually, sir, could I talk to Jonas for a minute?"

O'Neill gestured for Jonas to follow Sam. "Don't keep the lady waiting." 

Sam hid her smile at O'Neill's joking and led Jonas out of the room and back to the kitchen. The mugs she and Steve had been drinking from were still on the table, now long cold. She picked them up and took them to the sink to rinse.

"Sam?" Jonas was standing by the table, dimples showing. She knew him well enough by now to know that it was one of his nervous smiles, and not one of happiness. She paused, realizing that she'd gotten to know Jonas without even trying. She stored the thought away for later.

She brought two new mugs of tea over to the table and put one down in front of him. "Sit." 

He sat and put his hands around the mug, feeling its warmth. "Thanks."

"I owe you an apology," she said before she lost her nerve. 

He blinked. His dimples deepened. "What?"

"I've been blaming you for Daniel's death. It wasn't your fault. And I'm sorry." 

"Oh," he said. His smile faltered. "Um. Thanks? And uh, apology accepted." He rose to stand. "Good night." 

"Wait!" Sam put out her hand to stop him. This wasn't the reaction she'd expected. She thought he'd be happier, more willing to let bygones be bygones. "Don't go." He sat back down. She licked her lips, thinking to what she'd heard him confess to Steve at the dig site, something she'd never bothered to ask. It made her wonder if Jonas had ever felt so low he wanted to run out into a storm. "And I also should apologize for not asking how you were doing. I should have. I'm sorry."

He put his hands around the mug again. "No one on the team is particularly good at talking about their feelings." 

"Daniel was," Sam said before she could stop herself.

Jonas winced. "I think we've already established that I'll never be able to fill his shoes." 

"That's not what I meant," Sam said. "I wasn't comparing you to Daniel. I was comparing me." At Jonas' confused expression Sam continued: "I'm no good at this kind of thing. I'm an astrophysicist and an engineer. That's the stuff I understand. Emotions? Not so much. I kind of relied on Daniel for that. And now that he's gone—"

"You feel like you've lost your anchor," Jonas finished. 

"Yeah," Sam said, surprised. "How did you know?"

"Because that's all I've felt since I defected from Kelowna," Jonas said. "Like I'm anchorless." His smile didn't reach his eyes. 

Impulsively, Sam put her hands over Jonas'. "You're not! You have me, and Teal'c, and the Colonel, and the entirety of Stargate Command. You're not anchorless, Jonas. You're not." 

"But you don't want me here—"

"I do!" Sam said. "I do want you here.” 

"That’s really nice, Sam, and I appreciate you saying that. But we both know it’s not true.”

“I do want you here,” Sam repeated. “I’m just really sad Daniel’s gone.” 

“It’s my fault he’s dead,” Jonas said, repeated what he’d told her the night before. 

Sam was shaking her head even before he finished speaking. “It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault! Except your government’s.”

“Can’t really argue with that.” Jonas smiled ruefully, but then his face fell. “But Daniel died saving me. How doesn’t that make it my fault?”

“Because he would’ve done the same thing for anyone,” Sam said with certainty. “It’s who he was.” 

“He was a really good man.” 

“Yeah. He was better than the rest of us. That’s why he ascended. And who knows? Maybe he’ll de-ascend some day and become human again.” She smiled through her tears. 

Jonas nodded. "I'm really sorry he's gone." 

Sam squeezed his hands. "Me, too."

* * *

**Epilogue**

"Parameter's secure, Colonel," Steve said into his radio. "SG-15 in position around the Gate." 

"Well done," O'Neill's voice came back tinny and slightly fuzzy around the edges. "Now sit tight, we'll be back in a jiff." 

"Sir," Steve signed off without laughing out loud at the Colonel's informality. He'd been medically cleared for the last six months, and leading his own Gate team for the last three, but he still wasn't used to how unmilitary the second-highest ranking officer at the SGC actually was. 

They were on a reconnaissance mission with SG-1 in an attempt to track down the Lost City of the Ancients. Supposedly Jonas Quinn had figured out that the City wasn't actually lost, just never finished, and that the last Gate address that had been downloaded by Colonel O'Neill when he'd had the entirety of the Ancients' database in his brain was probably it's location. From what they'd seen when they'd scoped out the parameter however didn't give Steve much hope that they'd find any weapon capable of taking on Anubis. It looked like there was just a bunch of ruins being enjoyed by a tribe of space Nomads. And while this made their Archaeologist, Dr. Bibi Arain, very happy, it didn't do much to improve Earth's chances against the powerful System Lord. 

Still, he couldn't really complain. It was nice to be sent on a mission where he didn't have to worry too much about his team getting in trouble with the local Goa'uld overlord and their Jaffa warrior-slaves. He'd come in hot too many times through the Stargate to want to make it a regular occurrence. And while he knew he was still grieving over the loss of everything he'd known, he was no longer even remotely suicidal. The future he'd found himself in was far too incredible. As were the friendships he'd found with his new teammates. He was happy to be alive and working for the SGC. He just wished Bucky could've been there to see it, too. 

"Lieutenant," he called. 

Jenny Satterfield whipped her head around, black braid flying. "Captain?" 

"Why don't you and the sergeant go stretch your legs for a bit. I think me and Bibi can watch the Gate." 

Bibi looked up from where she was analyzing some engraved ruins a few feet away. "Bring us back something to eat." 

Jenny laughed. "You need to pack yourself extra rations." 

"I'm with Bibi," Sergeant Jesse Goldman said to Jenny. "Rations are garbage compared to local food." 

Jenny threw up her hands. "Am I the only one who remembers what happened on PX-037 when the two of you ate that yellow porridge and ended up puking for three days? But fine. I'll get you some local food."

"I liked that porridge," Steve said.

"You're a super soldier," Bibi reminded him. "Nothing makes you sick." 

“It was sitting in that pot over the fire for, like, a month and yet you still ate it!” the Lieutenant apparently felt the need to remind Bibi again. 

Steve was about to suggest that any food that Jenny and Jesse brought back from the village shouldn’t be over a month old when Sam’s voice came over the radio. 

“Captain,” she said, “we’ve found Daniel.” 

Her message made no sense. “Say again?” 

“Daniel!” Sam repeated. “Daniel Jackson! He doesn’t recognize us, and he doesn’t seem to know who he is, but he’s here and he’s alive. Steve, he’s alive!” 

Steve felt his mouth fall open. Dr. Daniel Jackson had been dead for over a year at this point. How could he be here? “Was he frozen?”

“What? No!” Sam laughed. “He de-ascended. He came back!” 

Steve remembered hearing about that; the ability of Ascended Beings to choose to become mortal again. Sam had met one a few years ago named Orin. It had just never occurred to him that Daniel Jackson would be one of them. 

His team could hear the conversation and were looking at him expectantly. Bibi’s eyes were wide with hope. She’d worked with him at the SGC before he died. “Daniel Jackson is alive?”

“The Colonel wants you and Dr. Arain to come to the village to see if you can help convince him to return with us,” Sam said. 

“Roger that,” Steve replied. He keyed off his mic. “Looks like food will have to wait for a while,” he said to his team. “Jenny, Jesse, guard the Gate. Bibi and I are heading into the village.” 

Bibi stood and dusted off the knees of her uniform pants. “Ready, Captain.” She and Steve turned towards the village. 

They all had their guns raised in the next second, including Bibi, who had unholstered her sidearm in record time. Clearly, she'd been doing the extra training that Steve had recommended. 

The man who'd encroached on their campsite put his hands forward. He was wearing the same brilliant blue robes as the nomadic villagers were wearing, but his head was bare, showing his short dark hair. His skin was paler than those of the other villagers, and his eyes were lighter than the robes he wore, almost grey in colour. "I mean no harm. The village elder asked me to fetch you." 

Steve felt like he'd been slammed in the gut by his own rifle. "Bucky?"

The man frowned. "Who by all the Gods, is Bucky?"

END


End file.
